ACADEMIC MINERAL RESOURCE (“ECONOMIC”) GEOLOGY IN THE USA – WHERE WE ARE AND WHERE TO GO?

Economic geology is a highly interdisciplinary field utilizing a diverse set of petrologic, geochemical, geophysical, and tectonic data for improved scientific understanding of element migration and concentration in the crust (ore formation) that has important ancillary benefits for mineral exploration, mining, and environmental planning. Demand for elements (particularly currently “critical” elements – e.g. Cu, In, REEs, Te) from mineral products increased during the past decade and remains high due to continued developing world industrialization and a slowdown in mineral discovery. In spite of these drivers, the number of mineral resource ("economic") geologists trained in the western world and the vigor of the related academic enterprise has decreased significantly over the past three decades, so that there is a looming shortfall in trained economic geologists. This decrease is particularly evident in the United States where long-term trends foreshadow the possible demise of economic geology education and research in the coming decade. AGI data for U.S. four-year universities indicate the number of economic geology professors decreased 45% (140 to 78) from 1999 to 2010 at the same time that economic geology MS and PhD degrees moved up to rank #1 and #4 of geoscience specializations. Academic economic geology training is largely done at the graduate (MS and PhD) level. It depends on research that has become difficult to fund due to flat overall federal support of geoscience research and lowering of economic geology specific funding due to investments in newer research areas. Lack of increased funding has also probably contributed significantly to the decrease in U.S. economic geology academic programs despite the highly attractive industry positions attained by economic geology graduates. There is currently no consensus among federal and state agencies, the national and international mining industry, the public, and the U.S. academic community regarding the importance of economic geology. Sustainable government funding of U.S. graduate research in economic geology to secure university overhead and promote new university hires is an urgent near-term requirement to ensure U.S. competitiveness in industrial production, national security, and development of new energy technologies.